NAACP Head Can Use Bad Language When Complaining about Language because He’s “One of the Best Guys”

by Selwyn Duke2/3/16
Perhaps NAACP now stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Cursing and Profanity. Don Harris is the white head (yes, he really is white, and reminiscent of a pustule, and, unlike Rachel Dolezal, even identifies as white) of the Maricopa County Chapter of the NAACP. He’s also very concerned about injudicious use of language, which is why he was on hand to try to collect the scalps of six Desert Vista High School girls who lined up to spell the word “ni**er” with letters and asterisks printed on their shirts, on their recent picture day. The girls were suspended for a complete school week, but this wasn’t good enough for left-wing activists.

Change.org circulated a petition reading, “[The girls’] punishment was 5-days suspension. This hurtful use of a racial slur is a complete disregard for the dignity of the black community in Arizona and across the nation and the punishment does not fit the total ignorance and cruelty of the crime[*].”

*Some exceptions may apply: please ignore the “dignity of the black community” when rap thugs and their wannabes use the word continually.

And despite the picture having been taken without the school’s knowledge, the petition continued, “We demand the resignation of the school’s principal, Christine Barela, immediately for deeming this 5-day vacation from school an acceptable punishment.”

Yes, the girls and their principal should be drawn and quartered and their body parts scattered in the far reaches of the realm. That’ll show ‘em!

So Harris, the white head, participated in an event last week in the Tempe Union High School District to discuss why the powers-that-be didn’t go medieval on the girls. But after the meeting, The American Mirrorwrites, “while participants were speaking with the media, he was caught on camera saying Channel 12 reporter Monique Griego had ‘nice t[**]s.’”

Hey, I think Howard Stern has just found his next guest.

But here’s where it really gets amusing. When Phoenix’s New Timescalled the NAACP office to ask about Harris’ remark, he replied, “The meeting was over. I apologize if anyone was offended. I could have said nothing. …I’m really f*****g sorry.” Maybe that’s how little Don learned to apologize at home. Caught with his hands in the cookie jar? “I’m really @#$%&! sorry, ma!”

Harris wasn’t done, though. Since he’d pledged $5,000 for the “n-word effort” (whatever that means, in practical terms), the New Times, being politically correct itself, asked if an effort should be made to eradicate “sexist” language. Here was his response, as the paper relates it (I’ve cleaned it up):

“I’m going to slash my wrists,” he spews. “Better yet, I’m going to throw myself out of a f*****g window, except I’m on the first floor …I’m one of the best god****d people in the state.”

“They’ve seen me now, they’ve seen what I’ve done. I’ve given up my law practice. I’m down here six, seven days a week. That’s what my commitment is. I support NOW, the women’s organization — god***n! — are you sh*****g me? Are you going to write this up?”

Now, I very much like Harris’ first two propositions. Instead of following such a course, however, something else is more likely; as the New Times amusingly put after mentioning that the vulgarian abruptly hung up the phone, “No doubt he’s back working to eradicate an offensive word” (not, however, in the service of the NAACP; he resigned shortly after the scandal).

To be clear, I don’t come at this from a politically correct perspective. Rather, the operative principle here is common decency, the kind George Washington (who never used profanity) and our grandparents generally exhibited. For instance, the aforementioned Mirror ran the very clever headline, “OMG: NAACP leader uses F-word to apologize for using T-word after N-word meeting.” Well crafted, but I could respond, “Writer uses God’s name in vain to criticize NAACP leader for using F-word to apologize for using T-word after N-word meeting.” And that’s the point: what should our social standards for speech be?

The problem with the politically correct thought police is not that they use social pressure to stifle some speech; again, whether it’s stigmatizing the use of profanity or something else, every group does that.

The problem is that the PC code is almost entirely wrong, quite stupid and allows for great contradiction.

Leftists descend to the very nadir of inanity, sometimes objecting to terms and names such as black hole, niggardly, Easter eggs, Christmas Trees and crippled as they rail against “microaggressions” and stigmatize substantive speech (“safe areas” and speech codes). And they sometimes do it via profanity-laced tirades that would make a drunken sailor blush. They have things backwards. “Niggardly” and other legitimate terms relate qualities and concepts; profanity is simply verbal violence and ugliness.

Of course, some will roll their eyes at my “God’s name” comment and, as one respondent who emailed me years ago mockingly put it, Little Lord Fauntleroy standard. But note that I grew up in the Bronx and have heard it all — I also ultimately saw through it all. Moreover, aren’t such comments reminiscent of when leftist Bill Maher said about a decade or so back that the Boy Scouts should be tolerated because the “squares” need some place to go? We’d do well to remember C.S. Lewis’ observation: “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. …We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.” I’d add, we mock virtue and are surprised when vice reigns supreme.

That the respondent in question was no liberal illustrates an important point: more and more conservatives today are using profanity publicly, with it appearing even in commentary as they play the caboose to the engine of liberalism. That is to say, it apparently means nothing to them that it is liberals who mainstreamed vulgar language; they’re more than happy to embrace and defend yesterday’s liberals’ cultural norms and scoff at those who object, coarsening society along the way. This gets at the true relationship between the processes known as liberalism and conservatism, as G.K. Chesterton so colorfully explained:

The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types — the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins.

The reason this two-step-dance process of national death occurs is simple: reference to taste and not Truth. This is illustrated perfectly by Harris. It’s not surprising he thinks he’s “one of the best” people in his state and polishes up his credentials by saying he supports NOW; this is reminiscent of Bill Clinton and ex-senator Bob Packwood, both of whom supported feminism publicly and abused the feminine sex privately; it also reflects research showing that while leftists rail against greed in principle, they’re defined by it in practice. They seem to believe they can indulge their beloved personal corruption and then expiate it with public displays of faux virtue.

More to the point, however, is that they exemplify that modernist mistake of self-deification. A person who believes in Truth (by definition absolute) uses it as his yardstick for morality. Now, when he looks around at others, he sees that they pale in comparison to this perfect standard.

But so does he.

Thus, he realizes that he and his fellow man truly are brothers in sin, both needing salvation, and can honestly say “But there for the grace of God go I.” But what about when someone is a relativist and doesn’t believe in Truth? What is his yardstick for behavior?

This often leads to great arrogance and contempt for others. Having a behavior standard reflecting your emotions is just another way of saying it merely reflects you. This makes it easy to view yourself as perfect, for it’s relatively hard to be out of conformity with yourself. A yardstick never fails at being three feet long.

Yet since no one is a carbon copy of you, others will always fail to measure up to your “truth” the way you do. So you look in your ethereal mirror and see this font of virtue, and you look down on the Lilliputians below and see vice. And you have thus put yourself in the place of God and have reduced others to disobedient children in need of your guidance and discipline.

This explains the infamous superciliousness of those we call leftists, but remember that many “conservatives” are just a bit behind the twisted curve. It’s sadly amusing to ponder a film such as Idiocracy (whose creation itself reflects descent into idiocracy), which portrays a degraded, vulgar, dystopian future, and think that all and sundry are making it prophetic. And if we haven’t yet destroyed ourselves and are still doing the two-step dance of civilizational death in 30 years, it’s easy to imagine conservatives shouting @#$%&! and @#$%&! and @#$%&! at those who point out that they’re politically and linguistically just like yesterday’s Hillary Clintons.

6 Responses to NAACP Head Can Use Bad Language When Complaining about Language because He’s “One of the Best Guys”

The NAACP (which I pronounce “kneecap”) has degenerated into a hate group over the past couple of decades, and this is merely another example. But don’t suggest even in jest having the offenders drawn and quartered. This was the traditional English punishment for treason committed by commoners, and the liberal fascists would be happy to bring it back to use on their enemies.

While I accept and congratulate you on pointing out the hypocrisy of Mr. Harris, one of the truths of life is, if we have freedom of speech we must put up with foul language. I, personally, cringe at the vulgar language I hear nowadays but I understand that if I am allowed to say what I please (without vulgarity), others must be allowed likewise (with vulgarity.) I understand that as a people we have socially accepted norms and these do not extend to the extremes of the language used today. While I would like to see some form of reining this behavior in, I don’t know how it can be done and still honor free speech. The most likely way to correct this would be at home by the parents of these people when they were children. My wife soaped the mouths of our kids a time or two and that took care of it until they were grown and out of our house. One of them works in an atmosphere of vulgarity daily and it has rubbed off on her. If we could soap out that mouth again, my money would be on ” clean (pun intended) free speech”) again.

So, all you zealots out there sue us for child abuse. You know what you can kiss of mine.

I don’t recall any such efforts by my parents, but I never used obscene language until I went to college. There are a lot of reasons why my pattern changed then — most important being the vulgar environment, combined with my realization at some point that certain mildly vulgar words I used were no more than substitutes for obscene ones. Is the sin the emotion, or the words used to express it?

The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition.

That said, Progressivism seems to be the way of the world. Even God progresses from having single-celled bacteria on the planet for 3 billion years to the design of human beings. Michael Medved was making the point on his radio program yesterday that it wasn’t good enough for Republicans to be the party of “no” or to harken back to earlier times. Instead they need to present an image of progress, even if our definition of progress is different.

I don’t at all doubt that the electorate now has to be treated like children, the message constantly crafted as “What’s in it for me.” They have been spoon-fed government from their birth. Most think they are victims of one sort or another (and the female race is a very big sort indeed). Too many of the various groups of victims are particularly aggrieved victims who would at least proverbial slit your throat rather than look at you. To harken back to the days when decency was more common, public language was more polite, and people were less corrupt is not a winning message.

Still, it’s the message here at StubbornThings. We’re not running for president so we don’t have to be popular. (That’s not a royal “we” but more of a collective “we.”) That said, Dennis Prager distinguishes between public swearing and private swearing. He says that public swearing indeed does coarsen our culture, but private swearing is a different thing.

Here at StubbornThings we are such a relatively small and intimate group, I tend to let loose with the coarse word or two. Not only won’t I apologize for it, but this should be seen in the context of the Nice Polite Men in the GOP (some who can’t even say “radical Islam”) who never swear but vulgarize our country all the same as they sell it out to debt, illegal aliens, political correctness, and the increasing embrace (via the Chesterton principle) of Cultural Marxism.

So cover your tender ears as I say “Fuck that.” There are more important things in this world than an off-color word or two. The obscenities being uttered by the political class are not generally via words but actions and laws (and indoctrination). I use bad words like a surgeon uses a scalpel. It is a way to cut through to the necessities.

Besides, it is not God Almighty who rules this land. The largest, nearly all-encompassing, influence is the entertainment culture. And the entertainment culture is positively laced with profanities. The shocking freak of the future will be the one who does not. You should all read this wonderful essay (buried at American Thinker) by E.M. Cadwaladr titled: Who Killed Bat Boy? It sounds like Glenn the Greater writing under a different name, but I don’t think it is him. But the salient point is:

At the bitter end, if the trend continues, perhaps the tabloids will start showing normal people on their covers. People with any sort of lasting standards are rapidly becoming the monsters of tomorrow.

Give this splendid and creative essay a read. Shoot for stuff such as this as your goal. This is fun, creative, relevant, and quite readable. I’m not sure why AT would bury their best article of the day midway down the blog section. But such is the common “vulgarity” of the dull and humdrum instead of appreciating sparkling articles such as this one.

Note that Herman Wouk, in his introduction to The Caine Mutiny, explained that such foul language functioned as a billingsgate in the Navy (and Army and Air Force). He only included it when he considered it appropriate for the circumstances. I think that’s a good way to think of it, especially in private.

Bill of Rights

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Amendment VII

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.